SUMNER, CHARLES (ante). A man of great personal force and indomitable will, Mr. Sumner made his influence more distinctly felt by the American people, and more directly influenced the course of events by his personal action, than did most of his associates in the senate. Frequently on the unpopular side of important questions, he often succeeded in turning the popular mind in the direction of his own opinion, by the force of the reasoning which he brought to bear on the question at issue. Such was peculiarly the case with regard to the Mason and Slidell affair; the emancipation act; and the St. Domingo question. His oratorical efforts were invariably the result of exhaustive labor, and to the last he methodically wrote out his addresses. From the beginning of the war of the rebellion, he insisted upon the abolition of slavery; and favored the largest possible freedom of action, political and social, for the negro. His antagonism to pres. Grant's St. Domingo policy was positive and continuous; and he
became so imbittered against the administration that he opposed Grant's re-election, and supported Horace Greeley in 1872. The antagonism was mutual, Mr. Sumner's friend, Mr. Motley, having been removed from the position of minister to the court of St. James in 1870; while he himself was forced out of the position of chairman of the important committee on foreign affairs in 1871, a position which he had held continuously for ten years. His last important act was to press his civil rights' bill, which placed the negro on a perfect equality with the whites in every state in the union, so far as personal rights under the law were concerned. He never recovered, it was thought, from the effects of the attack made upon him by Mr. Brooks in 1856; and in 1874 this trouble returned to him in a serious malady of the chest, which proved fatal to him on Mar. 11 of that year.